So, Star Trek Online pulled it for a while, and then put it back. But is it better or worse or just different?
“It” is the PvE queue “The Breach”, where a group of five player ships invade one of the huge Voth starships and disable it from within. There’s an event tied to this return, which is the usual “do this fourteen times in the next three or four weeks and get a bunch of marks/dilithium/free item/etc” sort of deal. Time being at a premium these days, plus me not having a great desire for the latest Voth thingamajig, I’ve only been running it with one character (my Fed main; maybe the next event I’ll bring out Rick Masters again so he can have some time in the sun again. He could use the extra gear, anyway).
The opening phase isn’t too different. As before, you’re doing a trench run, and blowing up stuff. However, the “course” through the ship is different, and shorter; it’s also a lot harder to achieve the bonus objective of blowing up a certain number of objects (and now that I think of it, it wasn’t a bonus before-you needed to do it before you could actually open the titular breach. In fact, based on one run I did, I’m not sure you even have to blow up the shielded thingies anymore-some ships just blew right through all of it and didn’t bother stopping.
Stay on target….
The original “blow up interior hangars” phase is gone now, as is the “blow up the dreadnought inside the ship” phase. Now you go directly to the “shell game” of blowing up the subspace core, and once you get past that phase, you get the last portion of blowing the primary core crystal and getting out of Dodge. This leads to a faster queue, but less opportunity to get loot drops. Which, of course, may or may not matter to most players-the better equipment these days is Reputation related.I’m not sure if I’d call the new version better, but I’d be hard pressed to call it worse. Certainly, if I were doing this with multiple characters, I’d be all for it, since shorter versions mean more characters can run through in a gaming night. And I might be forced to admit that I won’t miss that dreadnought all that much, as it was a big sack of health and shields, and if things didn’t go quite right (and/or you didn’t have a group with some abilities or gear), that could turn out to be a huge slog. The “closing the hangars” phase is a bit of a loss, though, since it wasn’t tied to huge sacks of health-just swarms of reinforcing ships until the hangars were closed up by a member of the team.
So, my verdict is, “just different”. While I often lament the devs removing stuff from the game, at least this time it feels more like a scalpel instead of a shovel. I’ll add the caveat that I tend to always restrict myself to the “normal” version of the queues instead of the Advanced or Elite options-mainly because I don’t consider my skills or gear as elite, and the Advanced versions would probably need me to be more aware/coordinated/faster/better, and if I’m just looking to enjoy myself without pressure, why would I do that to myself? But because of that, there may be little changes in those higher versions that I remain unaware of; other more dedicated folks will have to be a better guide to such things.
One more note before closing out this post: there’s changes in the wind to the mechanics of the game. It’s not like changing the game engine, but a mass tuning of both ground and space combat. I’m a tad skeptical-it’s not all that long ago that they just did a massive skill revamp, after all-but I expect that when it lands, I’ll have plenty to say. I’ll say this in advance, though: I’ve rarely found a revamp that actually made most of the players happy. Maybe this will be one of those rare ducks. Either way…it’s coming.
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